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US Ruling: California Must Cut Prison Population

US Ruling: California Must Cut Prison Population

by

Bob Egelko

Inmates are warehoused in three-tier bunks in the former recreation room at the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, CA.

A federal court panel ordered California on
Tuesday to reduce the population of its bulging prisons by 40,000 over
the next two years to meet constitutional standards for inmate health
care and said it could be done without releasing dangerous prisoners to
the streets.

"The convergence of tough-on-crime policies and an unwillingness to
expend the necessary funds to support the population growth has brought
California's prisons to the breaking point," the three-judge panel
said. Unless the courts intervene, the panel said, inmates will
continue to suffer and die needlessly because prisons lack the space
and the staff to treat them.

By changing parole practices and releasing some low-risk inmates to
local custody, treatment programs or electronic monitoring, the prison
population can be reduced "without a meaningful adverse impact on
public safety," the judges said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration immediately announced that it would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The state needs to reduce prison crowding on its own, by lowering
the inmate population and building more prisons, but "we just don't
think the federal courts should be ordering us to take those steps,"
state Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate said.

Don Specter, a lawyer for prisoners who sued the state over health
care, said the ruling allows California to "finally fix the horrible
problems caused by prison overcrowding, and do so in a way that will
not harm public safety but will make us all safer."

Differing opinions

The ruling "means we can't continue to sit on our hands," said state
Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairman of the Senate Public Safety
Committee.

But Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster (Los Angeles County), a party
leader on prison issues, said the effect of the ruling would be
"releasing dangerous inmates into every community in the state."

The panel underscored its conclusion, first announced in a tentative
ruling in February, that crowding in prisons - now jammed to nearly
twice their intended capacity of 80,000 - was the primary cause of
woeful health care.

One panel member, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San
Francisco, appointed a receiver to manage state prison health care in
2006 after finding that shoddy treatment was killing an average of an
inmate a week.

"The medical and mental health care available to inmates in the
California prison system is woefully and constitutionally inadequate
and has been for more than a decade," the panel said.

45-day deadline

The panel gave state officials 45 days to submit a plan that would
lower the population of the state's 33 prisons from 150,000 to 110,000
within two years, leaving the prisons at 137.5 percent of their
designed capacity.

Such a reduction can be largely accomplished, the court said, by
ending California's unique practice of returning parolees to prison for
minor parole violations.

Most of those parolees could be handled more effectively and cheaply
in local treatment and work-furlough programs, electronic monitoring,
and, if necessary, county jails, the panel said.

Inmates considered to pose "low to moderate risk" could have their
sentences shortened by several months for taking part in
rehabilitation, education or work programs, the panel said.

Governor's ideas

Schwarzenegger has endorsed similar proposals in the last two years.
He has also proposed transferring as many as 19,000 illegal immigrant
inmates to federal custody for deportation and updating grand-theft
laws to keep pace with inflation, which would reduce felony
convictions. His administration has transferred 7,900 inmates to
prisons in other states.

Cate, the governor's top prison official, said the administration's
proposals would lower the prison population by 35,000 to 37,000 over
two years. As soon as the bond market improves, he said, the state also
intends to begin work on 9,000 to 10,000 prison beds with bond funding
the Legislature has approved.

"We think they're sound measures that will reduce our prison
population in a safe way over time," Cate said. But he said a federal
court order is "a dangerous precedent" that, state officials believe,
violates a federal law limiting judges' authority over prisons.

The issue flared in the Legislature last month when Schwarzenegger
attached his population-reduction plan to a $1.2 billion cut in prison
spending. Republicans refused to approve any prisoner releases and
threatened to hold up the entire state budget, forcing the governor to
withdraw the details while leaving the spending cuts in place.
Lawmakers will decide how to reduce the prison budget when they return
to Sacramento late this month.

Further

Whew. That was way too close for comfort. And yeah, the country's in a sorry state to have come to this. But not only does Doug Jones become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Alabama in 25 years; his win is a blunt rejection of all the hate-mongering, gay-bashing, race-baiting, sexual-assaulting, serial lying crap of losers Moore and Trump and Bannon and their ugly ilk. Forward to mid-terms. And once and for all, to Moore in all his evil: "Fuck you and the horse you (badly) rode in on."